The Chrysler PT Cruiser played a significant role in kick-starting the compact crossover craze. It was built on a platform related to the affordable and fun-to-drive Dodge Neon, but offered enough space and a flat load floor to let it be categorized as a light truck. Unlike the Neon, the PT Cruiser did not win over driving enthusiasts, but it sure did win over buyers, with over a million sold across the globe. For sale on on Bring A Trailer is an ultra-low-mile, ultra-clean enthusiast’s PT Cruiser GT, with a five-speed manual transmission hooked up to the same engine as the fire-breathing Neon SRT-4.
Its turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder produced 230 horsepower and 245 pound-feet of torque, not bad for 2006. While the PT Cruiser GT never earned the same respect as the Neon SRT-4, it was still respectably quick. Car and Driver clocked a 2006 PT Cruiser GT at 6.8 seconds on a 0-to-60-mph run, and it ran a 15.4-second quarter-mile, times that were solidly in hot hatchback territory. By 2006, the PT Cruiser had received a mild facelift and interior revamp, but it wasn’t enough to shake the car’s cheugy image.
This particular example, though, ticks all the right boxes from its gaudy chrome wheels to its Electric Blue Pearl paint color, and it has all the optional extras that make this PT qualify as fully loaded. Most PT Cruisers served as rental cars or as family cars that were doomed to have the inside of the rear windows plastered in Happy Meal stickers, so it’s rare to find one this clean.
While this PT won’t earn much clout among the hypebeast crowd, we think it’s an objective show-stopper that will earn you mad respect from the folks who grew up surrounded by them, or just the weirdos with obscure taste in cars like me. Either way, please someone buy this bright blue, turbocharged, manual-equipped, barely broken-in masterpiece of the early 2000s. You’re not likely to find another example that matches this car’s perfection.
